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This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2013 at 3:00 pm and is filed under NZ Politics.
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That’s a long time on a benefit under a National govt. This man – along with anyone else on a benefit for more than 10 years – is the kind of WINZ “client” that is put into the too hard basket. I wonder how many job opportunities WINZ offered this man since he was on a benefit for 10 years. My guess is none at all – and *that* is a disgrace. I bet they have never had a CV on file for him.

Not only inflation adjusted, but adjusted for reality might be an idea.

Based on the current benefit rate for a person aged over 25 with no children, the man could have been paid $204.96 a week after tax…

Can a journalist, sub editor and web editor really be that stupid? Do they just not give a damn about even basic accuracy anymore? Or are they pushing an agenda?

Because the unemployment benefit hasn’t been $205 a week for the past 25 years. When I received it back in the 80s it was, IIRC, about $120 which included a proportion of the rental assistance paid to my partner and I. Then benefit rates were slashed in the 90s and never restored.

So the whole dollar figure – which means very little anyway – is wildly inaccurate.

By all means let’s debate whether 25 years on the dole is acceptable and what could and should be done to rectify the situation, but it’d be helpful to do so with useful facts, not some back-of-an-envelope calculation by a lazy reporter.

What’s sad is that it takes a major welfare reform to get something done about cases like this.

That during the entire 25 years, not one single employee at the local WINZ office who had his file in their hands said to themselves; “hey wait a minute…this guy has been unemployed for 5/10/15/20/25 years…perhaps I should call him into the office and light a fire under his arse…. see if I can enrol him in a training program…enquire what kind of effort he’s making to find a job..etc..”

Instead they likely just threw his file back into the bottom of the drawer and left him to rot.

To that end, it’s a shame the reforms don’t include a sweep through of WINZ staff, to ensure the people working there are competent professionals who, most importantly, actually give a shit.

Indeed I am sure she would. But the Herald article is lacking any details. I know privacy is an issue but has this person been offered and declined any positions? What is the average amount? Are they suffering any sort of disability not covered under the sickness benefits?

Based on the current benefit rate for a person aged over 25 with no children, the man could have been paid $204.96 a week after tax…

Well, if you want to base it on the current benefit rate ( which is $229.01 gross ), you wont get an accurate figure of benefit payments given the benefit in 1998, for example – was $173.74 ( or $147.34 net.) All the figures are here for the lazy journalist, who then has to find out how much accommodation supplement and other allowances the man got.

Exactly. They’ve all perpetuated it, and what’s more they know what it’s doing to the fabric of the nation, but also that it’s too costly to maintain without any of checks, balances or basic responsibilities that are FINALLY starting to kick in, albeit timidly.

However these people aren’t the real problem; it’s the DPB which costs the most, does the most harm, long term, and has resulted in arguably thousands upon thousands upon thousands of unwanted, neglected children who too often ‘grow up’ to be a massive drain on this poor country’s meagre resources in so many ways themselves.

How about the writer of the article asks Mr 25 years if he has fathered any children during that time.

It seems to me that his time on the unemployment benefit coincided with the neoliberal political agenda in New Zealand.

You Neolibs can’t have it both ways – You want a certain level of unemployment to drive wages down, but don’t want to pay benefits? You want small town New Zealand manufacturing to suffer, and then expect everyone to beg for a job?

People are surprisingly rational. If on balance it’s more valuable to not work and be supported then an individual will choose this. If it was harder to be supported (tighter benefit control) and easier to get work (no minimum wages, fewer draconian employment laws) then the very same rational judgement would see people like this choosing employment.

This case is symptomatic of collapsing democracy. Expanding welfare footprint creating larger pools of dependent voters. We’re behind the curve, but watching the Euro-PIIGS unravel should give us an idea of where we’re headed.

Yes to the point I believe that it’s possibly the single biggest issue facing us and has been for years and years. So much bad shit flows from welfarism. Think of how NZ society has changed from the days when it became a free-for-all.

I’d like to see a political party whose sole purpose is to rewind benefit dependency, and reboot it as the system it was originally proposed to be, and funded at the same % of GDP it started out as

After one child on the DPB – tough, the second one is your problem, your family’s problem and the father’s family’s problem. If you are able bodied and can’t find work, then here’s a job at the other end of the country. Go and do it – my olds travelled from the other side of the world here to work. People still do.

I picked up a hitch hiker on the way home from holidays on Saturday. Asked what he was doing, and he was on the dole.

So I asked why someone like him (he was early 20’s, looked fairly fit, sounded coherent) wouldn’t jump all over the apprenticeships being offered around the ChCh rebuild?

Apparently it was too hard. He said he’d have to get down there, find somewhere to stay while applying for work and he didn’t have the wherewithall to do that. Wouuldn’t WINZ help with that I asked? Apparently not, according to him…

Sounds bloody odd to me but maybe someone with a better knowledge of WINZ can set the record straight

No – the welfare reforms will not stop this. The man is obviously unemployable. Who would give him a job? He doesn’t have the basic skills for a job -getting to work on time and basic communication skills. No welfare reforms will fix that.

Now without judging the man and his capabilities we assume that he lives fairly rural.
In all probability he lives in a place where fishing, hunting, shell fish gathering etc are all part of the way of life.

Is it to far a stretch to assume that he traded a few mussels or paua or venisons or other traditional foods for other supplies. Maybe he had a plantation of exotic palnts that he kept tended.

One has to think he quite enjoyed a few beers occasionally and the odd Kuia or two for comfort. Perhaps there is one of those collecting DPB that lives just a horse ride away.. There lots of little settlement like that down the Coast.

Oh and incase your about to say it that’s not Tuhoe country.

Nice life for some. Well not really. Couldn’t buy the flash car nor the flash telly on the dole could he?

So he has been on the dole since 1988? That’s fantastic. It looks like we have finally found the one disadvantaged individual still struggling from the effects of Rogernomics! Labour and the Greens should get in touch with him and wheel him out at political meetings as evidence of the damage free market reforms did to our country!

yes thats right, he got $10,000 per year, which one of you, especially you Finkelenstein will show me how to live on $200 per week. Perhaps you can io the Bay of Islands Finklestein
Go On answer here, tell me.
I spend $250 per week for food for wife and me, my daughter is gone free lance veterinarian, another $350 for home, another $100 wife, another $100 for general maintenance, and the tax $150, don’t stop me now,
because I hope I support him, why don’t you people see anything, come in here socialists, am I all by myself
.

Oh dear Hamnida. You see it is the Keynesians that drive real wages down through their inflationary stimulus ideas.

And they fail on their logic – assuming the macro to apply equally to the micro. While their stimulus might raise aggregate income (in wage-units), it does so at the exepense of real income [through inflation],leaving individuals with pay packets that are worth less. And yet somehow they think that individuals with less purchasing power will lead to a sustained aggregate demand that is higher.

And their magic thinking? – that people will reduce their consumption less than their real income will drop. Now that magic is predicated on lower income earners funding employment through inflation.

It’s no wonder Keynesian economics led to the stagflation of the ’70s.

how did you lose the common people Farrar, where did they go ,
what happened to you brother,what happened to you, what is the point of a NZ Nat blog site totally devoted to itself,
you go out walking Farrar, and we know you must think,
how come we have an intellect in NZ who still come home but just retreats into self, can not think, but thanks for edit control the socialists will not allow this
come in here morons like davincimode

You’re on record as being a Winston First supporter. So please reconcile your last comment with the following statement in Winston First’s 2011 Manifesto (at page 57):

SOCIAL POLICY PLANS
See also Labour Market, Employment

New Zealand First will:
…
resurrect the policy of a community wage, paid to those who are unable to reasonably find paid employment but who will be expected to make a contribution back to the community which is paying them;

Your thoughts?

because I hope I support him

Well, just to be sure, we could increase your marginal tax rate and make sure the extra money goes towards supporting this particular individual. Just post your personal details and we’ll pass them on to the IRD on your behalf.

What about retired public servants, MPs, etc who already have a penson, wealthy farmers who never paid much tax, wealthy businessmen who never paid much tax, etc – all these people get National Super from age 65 often until 85 whether they actually need it or not – National Super costs far, far more than all the other benefits combined!

Not making any excuses for this guy but he could possibly be one of those people who have mental illness who have been pushed off the sickness benefit…I know a guy like that, there’s no way he can work, there was never any way he could work. There just has to be a realization that some people can’t look after themselves & can’t work. Fortunately, there aren’t many of them.

Of course most are able to work & should be held to account. The gnashing of teeth of many of the usual KB regulars does seem uncharitable when you consider the vast majority of bene’s end up back in the workforce in some capacity in pretty reasonable time. Gotta keep stroking those middle class social climbers though….a bit of bene bashing is just the ticket for Bunter Bennett, as usual, the hopeless fat turd.

And the left are supposed to be the ones who play the class warfare card?!

National Super costs far, far more than all the other benefits combined!

Perhaps but… The great Labour party dream was predicated nobody shall have too much and nobody shall have too little (IE Redistribution, socialism, unions, protest and resistance) –

National super has for decades been severe inter-generational theft. Current taxes supporting current retired people. How many decades have we known about the aging baby boomers creating a retirement income funding dilemma? In insurance sales circles 3 ? Dept of stats …. 4 probably ?

The people who have paid their taxes being promised by a government they would be looked after in retirement ( when it was really only to support their own ‘old people’) are now expect that delivered. National super is a political problem… like WFF….

What’s the next generation’s white elephant? – All their savings poured into a worthless leaky state home built on three fifth’s of five eights of a shoe string?

But the big question is when do people stop voting for other peoples money … the answer to that is probably when political parties stop selling it for votes.

burt, the next (funding) problem is going to be people retiring without having owned a home. While they worked they did not get accomodation supplement, but when they retire when they go onto super they will qualify for accomodation supplement. The decline in home ownership will have a future cost.

Sure, no argument with that of and in itself. But mitigating the consequences of one inter generational theft by perpetrating another isn’t going to solve the problem. Just another round of budget homes which will be shabby as all hell like many today from the last time Labour needed to build houses to be popular enough to get elected.

long-term unemployed kiwiblogger here for you to get stuck right into. Go ahead… set your keyboard on fire….

I voted National…. against the stereotypical beneficiary voting pattern…..

Is this worth talking about every time it comes up in the news which is every six months or so?

One thing I’ve thought of… the article is only concerned with continuous years unemployed. There’s also those who are on/off benefits for years and the total time spent unemployed racks up.

Another thing is there’s also sickness beneficiaries who aren’t really terribly sick as it were… they’ve just cynically found a way to receive a sickness benefit and be left alone for job-seeking.

And the DPB… for some brainless morons it’s a life choice and my thinking is similar to Longknives there. A lot of them are scroungy deadhead unemployable muppets that decide to have feral fatherless dumb-bum animal children.

As for myself…. the last time I worked was temp work driving rubbish trucks in June 2012.. The employer was bad. A lot of workers were… how do I put this? Not my type. I refused to work with one white idiot and then got a Tongan who spat continually across the day and was just generally ‘Mr Personality’. I thankfully got away from him after a total of 3-4 days.

When you do enough dumbarse braindead moron life-sucking jobs working with ignorant unattractive cretinous fucktards with bad hours, bad bosses, being treated like shit, low wages and shitty work that you hate every second of… well… I’m not ready yet to rejoin my fellow lowlives doing pointless menial humiliating bullshit. But what do I know?

I’m a dropkick because I don’t sleep normally. It’s quite common and I come across plenty of others with similar habits. I used to go to work on 0-4 hours sleep all the time. Every day for a week sometimes. You make mistakes, you can’t think, you get moody…. it’s pure hell waiting to go home…. it feels horrible.

I had to have an early meeting about this idiot I refused to work with… was it 6:45am or 5:45am? Can’t remember. Early. I only got two hours sleep after arguing on the phone the night before and took no food because I thought I wouldn’t be working that day.. I drove with the Tongan on a run that takes 14 hours per day with minimal breaks. I had a very very bad nasty headache by the end of the day and I was crying with about 6kms to go on the way home. I tracked down the e mail address for their big boss to ‘resign’ and I was out of there two days later. Fuckwits. One boss there tried to blackmail me into working with the white idiot. I said I’m not working with him… do whatever you have to. For him it was a bluff to try and get his way. He sort of talked to himself about what the contract was worth to them. Of course, the driver is worth nothing in that regard. I should’ve counter-offered that I’d work with the white loser for $25/ hour or nothing. That’s not the point though…. you don’t want to work with total cunts. I don’t anyway. I don’t buy the whole ‘you have to get along with people, that’s life’ argument either. That works to a point… not spending the day with a retard.

So… what do you want to do with these people? Get rid of welfare…. and then they’re homeless….. cool. Kill them? Shit… that would be good eh? Just get rid of them off planet earth.

If you cut my benefit I might have to resort to being exploited by employers who know they’ve got you by the balls, or I could rob your fucking house and likely get away with it seeing as most burglaries go unsolved.

But yeah… thanks taxpayers. I do appreciate not starving to death or having to beg for food or being homeless. Fantastic!!

I’ve just started to learn to bake biscuits and I give most of them away, seeing as only because I was unemployed did I have the time to go from 97kg to now 79-80kg and don’t want to ‘biscuit’ my arse back up there…. and I always tell them that they’re working and I’m not so take some biscuits as a small thank you. I’ve still got some cash saved up so think of it as spending my way towards having to find work faster if that helps you.

I deal with some very ignorant muppet case workers at WINZ… so it’s not quite all beer and skittles… and spent three hours one day arguing with some dribbling twats about the word ‘suitability’. They *did* try to bully me into taking shitarse jobs…. so there you go. That’s a real life story mate…. how’s that? And I didn’t like the dreadful kiwi accent of this woman that grated like nothing else….she’s from the ‘oiy live in chroiystchurch’ class… and has a stupid stupid white rubbish name…. and so there’s no way in hell I was taking any shit from that bitch…

Dear oh dear…. I don’t miss people *that much*. If I did…. I would do more to spend time with them… but I don’t. I can take them or leave them. I’m not dying of lack of human interaction. Most people are miserable fucking pricks and probably so am I and if I am one in a space is enough surely? Far out…

And I read there’s 175 000 people out of work at any one time. When there’s full employment… know what I’m saying? At the moment… someone’s got to be out of work anyway. Yes I realise that line of thinking is abhorrent. But you’ve got to admit… there’s some kind of twisted logic to it.

Another vacuous Herald article. Take the extreme statistical outlier and make a non-story out of him.

Q: What does the height of the tallest person in NZ tell us about the general population.
A: Nothing.

What struck me about this story was actually how *little* he has lived on. I’m not a big fan of welfare as a solution to unemployment, but I’m more annoyed at the journalist than the man.

If they want shock and awe then they could have compared this hopeless guy’s welfare bill to the cost of keeping someone in prison, or to David Bain’s legal aid bill, or to RMA costs for a local council footbridge…

Or they could have compared him to the top-10 income earners in NZ.

average $200/week? That’s a lot less than a lot of professionals would charge for an hour’s work.

thats right Jim above.
$200 a week is a sad story. and shame on Farrar for his insidious heading
called thank you very much for your donation
I do not have the right to intrude too much into Farrar articles.
I am starting to get the abuse here that farrar accolytes give
I used to write as peter quixote . I will do my opinion over at my own site soon
google
paulscottfilms

yes I have two wives both sexy and young and fuck hard,
I hardly know what to do they get so angry,
I tired most of the time but do not sleep,
you want new wife, tell me. I pay shifting costs.
Wife 2 costs approx $400 per week,
you can see how social welfare is failing us

Half of $21.4m 2012 Gold Card travel fund spent where only a quarter of retirees live.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said the review for Budget 2013 was ominous given the National Government had already overseen changes in 2010 that had eroded the scheme. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Expand
NZ First leader Winston Peters said the review for Budget 2013 was ominous given the National Government had already overseen changes in 2010 that had eroded the scheme. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Half of the $21.4 million spent on SuperGold Card public transport last year was in Auckland, although it is home to only one quarter of the country’s senior citizens.

Left right and centre – I appreciate life can be hard and making a living can be difficult. One reason I am a Christian is that God has enabled me to get work and has always provided me with employment. As long as I follow him and do his will I know that God will provide me with employment and finances.

“Thank you very much for your kind donations” – What is this again? For the last few years, all one ever seems to read or hear about beneficiaries in mainstream media, like the NZ Herald, and also at times the Sunday Star Times and other print and online media, yes also occasionally on television and radio, is this endless slagging off on them in general!

I am getting sick of this. This man who is supposed to have been on the UB for so many years, surely must either be a particularly unqualified, unskilled, mentally or physically disabled person, and/or he lives in a very remote, rural place, where there simply are no jobs for any person like him.

Surely, this person is a total extreme and bizarre case, and I would guess, he should probably rather be on a sickness or invalid’s benefit, because to my knowledge and experience, WINZ staff do put the pressure on unemployed quite relentlessly, and that has been so for many years, yes also before National won the 2008 election and started leading the government.

The vast bulk of unemployed move on and off that benefit rather fast, some may stay on it for justified reasons a bit longer than 6 months or a year, and a minority for a number of years.

Even sickness beneficiaries do in vast majority not stay on those benefits for all that long.

Why is the media always just focusing on abuse, fraud, sensationalistic cases, rather than report on the true state of affairs that beneficiaries live under? This selective reporting raises serious questions about media bias. Maybe the new breed of graduate journos have never experienced life on the dole or in real dire straits, so they do not relate to the “underclass”?

Perhaps publish some more balanced OIA figures on what goes on next time. Also perhaps have a look how supposedly “independent” WINZ’s “designated doctors” are when making fit for work assessments these days. The regime is harsh and becoming more draconian, even while there are insufficient jobs for those that are supposed to look for them.

One reason you’re a godlicker is because of all the awesome employment opportunities that come along with it?

Oh dear… that’s so bizarre I’m pausing to even think how to go about explaining why that’s wrong….

You don’t look at religion and say…’hey, I’ll do that because I’ll find it easier to get a job’. Far out man!!

If I was interviewing, being an athiest, the **last** fucking thing I’d want would be morons with critical thinking limited to ‘god does everything’. Shit… I wouldn’t give a religious freak a job…. weirdos!!